Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a
1986 motion picture released by Paramount Studios. It is the fourth
feature film based on the Star Trekscience fictiontelevision series. It completes the story
begun in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and continued in
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Intent on returning
home to Earth to face trial for their crimes, the former crew of
the USS Enterprise travels to Earth's past in order to
save their present from a probe attempting to communicate with
long-dead humpback whales.

After directing The Search for Spock, cast member
Leonard Nimoy was asked to direct the next feature, and given
greater freedom to the film's content. Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett
conceived a story with an environmental message. After
dissatisfaction with the first script produced by Steve Meerson and
Peter Krikes, Paramount hired The Wrath of Khan writer and
director Nicholas
Meyer, who collaborated with Bennett to rewrite the script.

Contents

Plot

The film begins three months after the events of Star Trek
III: The Search for Spock as a large cylindrical object moves
through space heading towards Earth, sending out an indecipherable
signal and disabling the power of any vessel or station that it
passes. As it takes up orbit around Earth, it continues signaling,
disrupting the global power system and causing extreme weather
patterns to develop over the planet while evaporating the oceans.
Starfleet Command, on
the last of its power reserves, sends out a subspace signal warning
of the danger.

On the planet Vulcan,
the former officers of the USS Enterprise are
living in exile. Accompanied by the Vulcan Spock, still recovering from his resurrection,
the crew takes their seized Klingon starship and head to Earth,
intending to face trial for their theft and destruction of the
Enterprise. As they enter the solar system, they hear
Starfleet's warning and the alien signal; Spock determines that it
matches the song of humpback whales, long since extinct on
Earth, and that the object will continue to wreak havoc on the
planet until it can be answered. The crew devise a plan to
slingshot around the Sun to time travel back to the late 20th century
and return with a whale, and hopefully two so that they can
repopulate the species.

The crew travels back in time to the year 1986, but their ship's
power is drained in the process. Hiding their ship using its cloaking device
in San
Francisco, the crew splits up to accomplish their tasks: James T. Kirk and
Spock attempt to locate humpback whales, Montgomery
Scott, Leonard
McCoy and Hikaru
Sulu must create a holding tank for the return trip, and Uhura and Pavel Chekov search for a way to recharge
the ship. Kirk and Spock discover a pair of humpback
whales—"George" and "Gracie"—in the care of Dr. Gillian Taylor at
the Cetacean Institute and learn they will soon be released into
the wild. Kirk attempts to learn the tracking codes for the whales
from Taylor, but is rebuffed. Scott, McCoy, and Sulu procure the
necessary materials for the holding tank by giving the formula to
transparent aluminum to a
local manufacturer; Uhura and Chekov beam aboard a nuclear-powered
aircraft
carrier and draw some of its power to recharge their ship, but
are discovered. Though Uhura is beamed back, Chekov is captured by
the United States Navy and severely injured in an escape attempt.
Kirk and the rest of the crew manage to rescue him and return to
the ship.

The ship is successfully recharged, but Taylor arrives and tells
Kirk that the whales have been moved early. Kirk reluctantly lets
her tag along on the ship in order to get the tracking codes. The
crew locates George and Gracie before they are killed by whalers,
and transport the creatures into the waiting tank. With the
intended cargo, the crew returns to the future. On approaching
Earth, the ship loses power and crashes into San Francisco
Bay. Once released, the whales respond to the probe's signal,
causing the object to restore Earth and return to the depths of
space. The Enterprise crew's charges are all waived in
light of their heroic efforts. Only Kirk is punished for disobeying
a superior officer, and is demoted from Admiral to Captain. Having
been brought to the future, Taylor takes a position on a science
vessel. The crew departs for their new ship, which they learn is
the newly-christened USS Enterprise
(NCC-1701-A), and depart on another mission.

Cast

William
Shatner as James
T. Kirk, captain of the Enterprise. Shatner was
initially unwilling to reprise the role of Kirk until his salary
was increased to $2 million, and was promised that he could direct
the next film.[1]
Shatner described The Voyage Home's comic qualities as one "that
verges on tongue-in-cheek but isn't, it's as though the characters
within the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of
living [and] you play it with the reality you would in a
kitchen-sink drama written for today's life."[2]

Leonard
Nimoy as Spock, the former
captain of the Enterprise who was resurrected by the
effects of a powerful terraforming device.

Catherine
Hicks as Dr. Gillian Taylor, a biologist on 20th century Earth.
During production a rumor circulated that the part had been created
because Shatner had demanded a love interest, something Kirk had
frequently had in the television series but that had been absent in
the films; writer Nicholas Meyer denied this, saying that
the inspiration for Taylor came from a woman biologist featured in
a National Geographic documentary about
whales.[4]
The choice for Taylor came down to Hicks and another actress. Nimoy
invited them to lunch with Shatner and ultimately picked Hicks, as
she and Shatner had the better chemistry.[5]

Majel
Barrett reprised her role as Christine Chapel, the director of
Starfleet Command's medical services. Many of her scenes—some
reportedly very large—were omitted in the final cut, angering the
actress. Her final role in the film consists of one line of
dialogue and a reaction shot.[6]

Jane Wyatt as Amanda Grayson, Spock's mother. Wyatt
commented that although she disliked working with actors who were
directing, she found Nimoy an exception because he could
concentrate on working with being part of the cast as well as
setting up the crew.[3]

Robin Curtis
as Saavik, a Vulcan member of
Starfleet. Saavik's role is largely minimal in the film—originally,
she was intended to have remained behind on Vulcan because she was
pregnant with Spock's child after they mated in The Search for Spock. In the final cut
of the film, all references to her condition were dropped.[6]

Production

Development

Leonard Nimoy was asked to return to direct The Voyage
Home before The Search for Spock was released.
Whereas Nimoy had been under certain constraints in filming the
previous picture, Paramount gave Nimoy greater freedom for the
sequel. "[Paramount] said flat out that they wanted my vision,"
Nimoy recalled.[8]
In contrast to the drama-heavy and operatic events of previous
Star Trek features, Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett
wanted a lighter movie that did not have a clear-cut villain.[5]
As William
Shatner was unwilling to return, Nimoy and Bennett spent eight
months considering a prequel
concept by Ralph Winter about the
characters at Starfleet Academy, before Shatner
received a pay increase and signed on to star.[1]

Despite Shatner's qualms,[5]
Nimoy and Bennett selected a time travel story where the
Enterprise encounter a problem which could only be fixed
by something only available in the present day (the Star
Trek characters' past). They considered numerous ideas
including violin makers and
oil drillers, as well as a
disease which had its cure destroyed with the rainforests. "But the depiction of thousands
of sick and dying people seemed rather gruesome for our
light-hearted film, and the thought of our crew taking a 600 year
round trip just to bring back a snail darter wasn't all that thrilling!",
explained Nimoy. The director then read a book on extinct animals
and conceived the used storyline.[1]
Nimoy hit upon the idea of humpback whales after talking with a
friend—their song added mystery to the story, and their size added
logistical challenges the heroes would have to overcome.[9
]

Nimoy approached Beverly Hills Cop writer Daniel
Petrie, Jr. to write the script when a concept that executive
producer Jeffrey Katzenberg described as
"either the best or worst idea in the world" arose—Star
Trek fan Eddie
Murphy wanted a starring role. Both Nimoy and Murphy
acknowledged his part would attract non-Star Trek fans to
the franchise following the rising popularity of Murphy, but it
also meant the film might be panned. Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes
(The Long Way Home) were hired to write
a script with Murphy as a college professor who believes in aliens
and who likes to play whale songs. Murphy disliked the part,
explaining he wanted to play an alien or a Starfleet officer (Nimoy
was unaware of this)[10] and
chose to make The Golden Child (a decision
Murphy later said was a mistake). Murphy's character was combined
with a marine biologist and a female reporter to become Gillian
Taylor.[11]

Paramount was dissatisfied with the script, so head of Paramount
Dawn Steele asked The Wrath of Khan writer and director
Nicholas Meyer to help rewrite the script. Meyer never read the
earlier script, reasoning that since the studio did not like it
there was no reason to. Instead he and Bennett split up the plot.
Bennett wrote the first quarter of the story, up to the point where
the crew goes back in time. Meyer wrote the story's middle portion,
taking place on 20th century Earth, and Bennett finished with the
ending.[12]
After 12 days of writing, Meyer and Bennett combined their separate
portions.[9
] In this version, Gillian Taylor stays in 1986
Earth and vows to ensure the survival of the humpback whale despite
the paradox it would create. Meyer preferred this "righter
ending"[4]
to the film version, explaining "The end in the movie detracts from
the importance of people in the present taking the responsibility
for the ecology and preventing problems of the future by doing
something today, rather than catering to the fantasy desires of
being able to be transported in time to the near-utopian
future."[11]
Meyer and Bennett also cut out Krikes and Meerson's idea of the
Klingon Bird-of-Prey flying over the Super Bowl (where the crowd assume it is
part of the halftime spectacle) and the hint that Saavik remained
on Vulcan because she had become pregnant with Spock's child.[11]

Nimoy said Meyer gave the script "the kind of humor and social
comment, gadfly attitude I very much wanted".[3]
Nimoy added his vision was for "no dying, no fighting, no shooting,
no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy. I
wanted people to really have a great time watching this film [and]
if somewhere in the mix we lobbed a couple of big ideas at them,
well, then that would be even better."[13]
Meyer's film Time After Time had
been largely based in San Francisco, and when he was told by the
producers that The Voyage Home had to be set in the same
city, he took the opportunity to comment upon cultural aspects not
covered by his earlier film, among them punk rock—The Voyage Home's scene where Spock knocks out
an annoying punk rocker with a stereo via a Vulcan nerve
pinch was based on a similar scene cut from Time After
Time.[4]

Meyer described the writing process as running smoothly. He
would write a few pages, go to Nimoy and Bennett and show it to
them. After a conversation about the pages Meyer would return to
his office and wrote some more. Once Nimoy, Bennett, and Meyer were
happy, they showed the script to Shatner, who offered his own notes
and started the rewriting process over again.[14]
The completed script was shown to Paramount executives, who loved
it.[9
]

Design

The alien probe was the responsibility of ILM's model shop. The
modelmakers started with Rodis' simple design, which was a simple
cylinder with whalelike qualities. The prototype was covered with
barnacles and colored. The probe's ball-shaped antenna that juts
out from the bottom of the craft was created using a piece of
irrigation pipe with machinery to turn the device. Three models
were created; the primary 8-foot (2.4 m) probe model was
supplemented by a smaller model for wide shots and a large 20-foot
(6.1 m) model that used forced perspective to give the probe
the illusion of massive dimensions.[15]

During the Earth-based scenes, the 23rd century crew continues
to wear their future clothing. Nimoy debated about whether the crew
would change costumes, but after seeing how some people in the city
dressed, he decided that they would still fit in.[5]

Filming

Nimoy chose Donald Peterman, ASC, as director
of photography.[16]
Nimoy said that he regards the cinematographer as a fellow artist,
and that it was important for him and Peterman to agree on "a
certain look" that Peterman was committed to delivering. Nimoy had
seen Peterman's work and felt that his work was more nuanced than
simply lighting a scene and capturing an image.[17]

The film's opening scenes aboard the starship Saratoga
were also the first to be shot, with principal photography
commencing on February 24, 1986.[7]
The set was a redress of the science vessel Grissom bridge
from The Search for Spock, which in turn was a redress of
the Enterprise bridge created for The Motion
Picture. The scenes were filmed first to allow time for the
set to be revamped to stand in for the new Enterprise-A at
the end of filming.[7]

The Voyage Home was the first real look at how
Starfleet Command operated. Bennett and Nimoy visited NASA JPL to
learn how a real deep space command center might look and operate.
Among its features was a large central table with video monitors
that the production team nicknamed "the pool table"; the prop would
later find a home in the engine room of the USS Enterprise-D on the
television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.[7]

As with previous Star Trek films, existing props and
footage were reused where possible to save money. The Voyage
Home's Earth-based
story required less of this than The Wrath of Khan and
The Search for Spock. The Earth Spacedock interiors and
control booth sets were reuses from The Search for Spock,
although the computer monitors in these scenes featured new
graphics (the old reels had deteriorated in storage.) Stock footage
of the destruction of the Enterprise and the Bird of Prey
moving through space were reused. While the Bird of Prey bridge was
a completely new design, other parts of the craft's interior was
also redresses (the computer room was a modification of the reactor
room where Spock died in The Wrath of Khan.[7]

Vasquez Rocks was used as a stand-in for the alien world of
Vulcan

Vulcan and the Bird of Prey exterior was created with a
combination of matte paintings and a soundstage. Nimoy had searched
for a suitable location for the crew's deliberations to go back to
earth, but various locations did not work, so the scene was instead
filmed on a Paramount backlot, with creative ways to mask the fact
that buildings were 30 feet (9.1 m) away.[5] A
wide angle shot of Spock on the edge of a cliff was filmed at Vasquez Rocks, a
park north of Los Angeles.[7]

The dream sequence. After all other Bird of Prey bridge scenes
were completed, the entire bridge was painted white for the one
shot that transitioned into the sequence.

The Voyage Home was the first Star Trek film
to extensively film on location (only one day was spent doing so in
The Search for Spock.)[9
]

The Federation council chamber was a large set filled with
representatives from many alien races. Production manager Jack T. Collis
economized by building the set with only one end; reverse angle
shots used the same piece of wall. The Federation President's
podium and the actors filling the chamber's seats simply switched
positions for each shot. Much of the production was filmed in and
around San Francisco in ten days of shooting. The production wanted
to film scenes that were instantly identifiable as the city.[18
] The use of extensive location shooting caused
logistical problems; a scene where Kirk is nearly run over by an
irate driver required 12–15 cars that had to be repositioned
if the shot was not correct, taking a half-hour to reshoot. Other
scenes were filmed in the city but used sets rather than real
locations, such as an Italian restaurant where Taylor and Kirk eat.
In the film, the Bird-of-Prey lands cloaked in Golden Gate
Park, surprising some trashmen who flee the scene in their
truck. The production had planned to film in the real park (where
they had filmed scenes for The Wrath of Khan), but heavy
rains before the day of shooting prevented this (the garbage truck
would have become bogged down in the mud.) Will Rogers Park in
western Los Angeles was used as the stand-in instead.[5]

When Kirk and Spock are traveling on a public bus, they
encounter a punk rocker blaring his music on a boom box, to the
discomfort of everyone around him. Spock takes matters into his own
hands and performs a Vulcan nerve pinch, stunning the
man. The inspiration from the scene came from Nimoy's personal
experiences with such a character on the streets of New York. "[I
was struck] by the arrogance of it, the aggressiveness of it, and I
thought if I was Spock I'd pinch his brains out!"[5]
The character (credited as "punk on bus") was played by Kirk
Thatcher, an associate producer on the film.[19]
On learning about the scene, Thatcher convinced Nimoy that he could
play the part, and so he shaved his hair into a mohawk and bought
clothes to complete the part.[5]
It was also Thatcher's idea to have the punk (once rendered
unconscious by Nimoy), hit the stereo and turn it off with his
face.[19]

The Monterey Aquarium, viewed from the back. The shallow area
behind the rocks was turned into a whale tank via special effects;
other changes included the addition of a skyline in the background
and the removal of several buildings.

Much of the Cetacean Institute was created by using the
real-life Monterey Bay Aquarium. A holding
tank for the whales was added via special effects to the Aquarium's
exterior.[5]
For close-ups of the characters watching the whales in the tank,
the Aquarium's walls and railings were measured and replicated for
a set on the Paramount parking lot. One scene takes place by a
large glass through which observers can see the whales (and Spock
initiating a mind meld) underwater. This was a
combination of footage of actors reacting to a brick wall in the
Aquarium (shot from the front) and shots created using a large blue
screen at ILM (shot from the back.) The footage of Spock melding
with the whales was shot weeks later in a large water tank used to
train astronauts for weightlessness.[5]

The scene in which Uhura and Chekov question passersby on the
location of nuclear vessels was filmed with a hidden camera.
However, the people whom Koenig and Nichols speak to were extras
hired off the street for that day's shooting, and, despite legends
to the contrary, knew they were being filmed. In an interview with
StarTrek.com, Layla Sarakalo, the extra who said, "I
don't know if I know the answer to that... I think it's across the
bay, in Alameda", stated that after her car was impounded because
she refused to move it for the filming, she approached the
assistant director about appearing with the other extras, hoping to
be paid enough to get her car out of impoundment. She was hired and
told not to answer Koenig's and Nichols' questions. However, she
did answer them and the filmmakers kept her response in the film,
though she had to be inducted into the Screen Actors Guild in order
for her lines to be kept.[22]

When Sulu, Scotty and McCoy are standing in front of the Yellow Pages ad, they
encounter an arguing Asian couple. This scene was supposed to end
with Sulu encountering his young ancestor, Akira Sulu, but the
child actor hired for the part began to cry and was unable to
finish the scene.[5][23]

Effects

Industrial Light &
Magic created the visual effects. Most shots of the humpback whales were scale models shot at their studio or
life-size animatronics shot at Paramount.[13]
The USS Enterprise was
destroyed in the previous film partly because visual effects
supervisor Ken Ralston wanted to build a "more state-of-the-art
ship for the next film", but the filmmakers made the less costly
decision have the crew return to serve on the duplicate USS Enterprise A,
and six weeks was spent repairing the old model. A travel pod from
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was also reused for the
ending, although the twenty-feet long interior set had to be
rebuilt. Michael
Okuda joined the Star Trek franchise with The Voyage
Home, designing smooth controls with backlit displays for the
Federation which were eventually dubbed "Okudagrams". Okudagrams were also used for
displays on the Klingon ship, though large buttons remained for
that set.[24]

A scale model of
the Golden
Gate Bridge was used, which was two feet tall at one end and
sixteen feet tall at the other. The shorter end was filmed in
front, creating a forced perspective which made it
look longer. For the alien probe, Ralston had it painted black to
make it look more mysterious after viewing the first few shots of
it. Computer graphics were used for the crew's time traveling.[21]

Mark Mangini served as The Voyage Home's sound designer. He described
it as different from working on many other films because Nimoy
appreciated the role of sound effects and made sure that they were
prominent in the film. Since many sounds familiar to Star
Trek had already been established—the Bird of Prey's cloaking
device, the transporter beam, et al—Mangini focused on making only
small changes to them. The most important sounds were those created
by the whales and the probe. Mangini's brother lived closed to
biologist Roger
Payne, who had many recordings of whale song. Mangini went
through the tapes and chose sounds that could be mixed to suggest a
sort of language and conversation. The probe's screeching calls
were the whale song in distorted form. The humpback's communication
with the probe at the climax of the film contained no dramatic
music, meaning that Mangini's sounds had to stand alone. He
recalled that he had some difficulty with envisioning how the scene
would unfold, leading Bennett to perform a puppet show to explain.
Nimoy and the other producers were unhappy with Mangini's attempts
to create the probe's droning operating noise; after 18 attempts,
the sound designer finally asked Nimoy what he thought the probe
should sound like, and recorded Nimoy's response. Nimoy's voice was
distorted with "just the tiniest bit of dressing" and used as the
final sound.[26
]

The punk music that blares during the bus scene was written by
Thatcher after he learned that the audio to be added to the scene
would be "Duran
Duran, or whoever" and not "raw" and authentic punk.[19]
Thatcher collaborated with Mangini and two sound editors (who were
in punk bands) to create their own music. They decided that punk
distilled down to the sentiment of "I hate you", and wrote a sound
to match. Recording in the sound studio as originally planned
produced too clean a sound, so they moved to the outside hallway
and recorded the entire band in one take using cheap microphones to
create the distorted sound intended.[18
] The song was later used for Paramount's "Back to the
Beach".[19]
The song is credited to the band 'The Edge of Etiquette.'

Themes

Reception

Release

The movie begins with a dedication from "the cast and crew of
Star Trek" to the memory of the seven astronauts who were
killed in the Space Shuttle
Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986 (ten months
before the film's release).

When released in Europe and South America, the film was given
the title The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV and had a prologue
narrated by Shatner and scored by Leonard Rosenman reviewing the
events of the previous two films. This was included because The
Search for Spock had suffered badly overseas due to the
hugely-popular science-fiction comedy Ghostbusters and
grossed only $10 million. When this film came out, references to
the Star Trek brand were cautiously avoided in order to stem a
repeat of what happened in 1984. It was included on the European,
Asian and South American VHS release (when it came out on DVD, the
branding was reverted back to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for its
worldwide release in 1999 and 2003).[27]

The Voyage Home was the first Star Trek film
shown in the Soviet Union. It was screened by the World Wildlife Fund on June
26, 1987 in Moscow to celebrate a ban on whaling. Nimoy and Bennett
attended the screening; Nimoy had completed filming Three Men
and a Baby the day before and enjoyed visiting Russia,
where his ancestors came from. Bennett was amazed the film got the
same laughs as it did with an American audience. He said "the
single most rewarding moment of my Star Trek life" was
when the Moscow audience applauded at McCoy's line at the film's
end, "The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the
universe. We'll get a freighter," which was a clear "messenger of
what was to come."[3]

Critical
response

The film was a critical and commercial success. It grossed
$109,713,132 in the U.S. and $133,000,000 worldwide, against a
$27,000,000 budget.[28] Of
the first ten films, it sold the second-most tickets and was the
second most profitable movie in the series adjusted for 2007
inflation (behind The Motion Picture though both are now
surpassed by the eleventh film). On the Special Edition DVD of the
film, Leonard
Nimoy says that this was the most well-received of all the
Star Trek films made to that point. Producer Ralph Winter also
added that this film did very well as it was liked by both fans and
non-fans of the Star Trek phenomenon. Due to the success of this
film, Paramount greenlit a new Star Trek television series (after
failing to get one off the ground in 1977). The series ultimately
became Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in major
markets on September 28, 1987.

USA Today
gave a positive review, declaring "Kirk and company turn into the
most uproarious out-of-towners to hit the Bay area since the
Democrats in 1984," and felt the lack of special effects allowed
the actors to "prove themselves more capable actors than ever
before." Janet
Maslin of The New York Times noted
The Voyage Home "has done a great deal to ensure the
series' longevity."[13]

Home
video

The film was given a "bare bones" DVD release on November 9,
1999 with no extra features. Three and a half years later, a two
disc "Collector's Edition" was released with supplemental material
but with the same video transfer as the original DVD release. It
featured a text commentary by Michael Okuda and an audio commentary
from director Leonard Nimoy and star William
Shatner.[29]